i was about to sit down and blog. it would be the first time i had posted anything in several days. don’t know why, but i just haven’t had too much to say…
anyway, just as i was about to log on, ella started crying. so gretchen goes in there for a minute and soon emerges with the sounds of ella’s cries following her from the dark room. i guess ella wanted to see big papa. so i go in to rescue her.
i pick her up and say, “honey, it’s night-nights. you gotta go to sleep.” she’s all worked up. her perfect little fat butt is resting on my old callused hand, and she wraps her perfect little legs around my old fat belly. she struggles to gain control of her perfect little sobs in between perfect little breaths. finally, she calms down a little and rests her perfectly soft cheek against my old, freckled shoulder. i can feel her perfectly straight, strawberry-blond hair on my old, sore neck. i sing her a few lines of the song i made up last night while i was putting her to bed…”little girl, it’s been a long, long day. we saw the cows and pigs and watched the doggies play. little girl, don’t you cry on me, ’cause you don’t need your mama when you’ve got your daddy…” i normally sing her “thunder road,” but tonight i don’t feel like sharing the moment with the boss. just daddy and ella.
i run my finger up and down the tiny bumps of her perfect, fragile spine. then i trace her perfect, thin shoulder blades, all the while marveling at the remarkable way god put her together like a 3d puzzle of the most advanced level. she’s finally settled, and she’s ready to go back to bed. so i put her down, and i hand her the dolly/blanket that our friend courtney gave her, and i shush her a couple of times. then i step back and watch her settle on a final sleeping position while i rub her tears into my shoulder.
i was supposed to write about today, and church was good, and the youth group was pretty cool…but i just don’t care about all of that very much right now.
as i’m going through the list of songs this church knows the other day, gretchen says, “you haven’t done ‘hear our praises’ yet, have you?” well, the first thought that entered my head (being honest, now) was not “ooh! great idea! why didn’t i think of that?!”
not that i don’t like the song…i actually do like that song quite a bit…it’s just that (again, being brutally honest…and i may make a couple of enemies here) whenever i hear darlene zschech singing over a totally 90’s drum beat with rhythmic piano, hyper-speed open-string guitar strumming, step-clapclap-step-clap…well, i just don’t usually react well. i feel like all the songs from that era sound identical, and dated, and whatnot. sorry to the lady in my church whom i know loves darlene’s greatest hits. i know i go over the top. i know she’s written a lot of good songs. i know she’s great.
anyway, i looked it up, and reuben morgan wrote that song. and in 2005 he released his own recording of it…and it’s a lot more to my liking. you know, modern eighth-note based drum beat, slightly overdriven guitar with a slight delay, driving bass, minimal piano… (you know, sounds just like a lot of other stuff out there…i’m such a hypocrite…) well, give it a listen. see what you think. i’ll even include both versions for easy comparison.
uncomfterfull: the state of having had so much to eat that you are full, to the point of physical discomfort. a combination of the words uncomfortable and full.
common use: ugh…i can’t believe i thought it was a good idea to come to the chinese buffet…i’m so uncomfterfull.
“First, let me make it very clear, poor people aren’t necessarily killers.
Just because you happen to be not rich doesn’t mean you’re willing to kill.”
George W. Bush
May 19, 2003
White House
…and there is a lot more to life than being really, really, incredibly good looking…
like last week’s “wednesday worship,” this may or may not be a weekly occurrence on my blog, but there’s a song i’ve had in my head since it came up in shuffle mode on my ipod on thursday afternoon. it’s by a band called the koo. you have never heard of them, unless you’ve had the unusually lucky chance to be in a nashville/franklin/murfreesboro area bar when they happened to be playing… their front man is a good friend of mine from childhood, and he’s always been a guy who could put a lyric and a melody together to make a hook that would play on loop in your head for days and days…and days… the song is called so bold. it’s vrrynass.
mind-dump…normally, i call it quick hits, but tonight it feels like a mind dump.
1. long day today. up at 5:30am and working until about 6pm. i enjoy what i do, but it is tiring.
2. the music today was lots of fun. it turned out better than i thought it would.
3. got to get lunch with dr. bruce petersen and his wife today. he was one of my professors in college, and today he was the guest speaker at our church. nice to catch up.
4. i’ve been looking forward to eating at steve’s dakota grill ever since i found out we were moving back to ohio, so you can imagine my joyful state when dr. bruce picked it for lunch. but i was a little disappointed with my meal… it was partially my fault: i sent back an overcooked rib-eye, and when i got the replacement steak back it was totally raw. i would say that tie outside looked good, but the inside was …em not good…
5. i have to turn in a proposed budget tomorrow for the up-coming church year. golly-geee, wally, those left-brained, detail oriented tasks are great. i love them. and i love doing them.
6. my wife and i are trying to speak with less sarcasm, but it’s hard. we don’t even realize we’re doing it most of the time.
7. we moved the stage around today: we had only 2 vocalists besides myself, and we also moved one of the guitarists up to the front of the stage. i don’t know if anybody really cared, but it was cool getting him out there. also, i don’t have to figure out how to get as many vocalists to blend at a time with only 2 singing. vrry nass.
8. we sang “all creatures of our god and king” today. that’s a great song.
9. pretty excited about wednesday: i’m going here to learn how they do their 20-somethings ministry. hopefully i come back with a head full of ideas.
10. so sleepy. another big day tomorrow, as well. good night.
my friend ren buckland posted something recently about how the tech guy is your friend…how you can’t get mad at the tech guy for something the tech manufacturer did…similar to the way you wouldn’t blame your doctor for a drug manufacturer’s mistake… well, that’s all well and good, ren. and i agree with you. tech guys are here to help. i just wish they could help me a little more right now. i’ve got a whole bunch of folks trying to figure out what’s wrong with my office…other than the fact that there’s a nut loose behind the desk (named deWeb)… here are some of the issues i’ve encountered:
1. i can’t connect to my ftp site from my office. i know i just lost about 73% percent of my readers on that one. but just know this: if you’ve ever tried to upload anything to a website - i.e. photos, files, etc. - you would flip if you had a clue how much faster, easier, and more intuitive it is with a good ftp client…i know…nerd alert and whatnot…
2. my phone is supposed to ring only on intercom calls from other offices, not every time somebody calls the main church line. but we can’t figure out how to change the programming in the phone line…and so i hear every call that comes in. that may sound snobby or whatever, but i don’t mean it that way. we have a whole bunch of people whose job and/or ministry here is to come in and answer the phones, and the people who don’t have to answer the phones appreciate it greatly!
3. the electricity in this building is shaky, but i think that my office in particular has the shakiest…is that even a word? it surges and cuts out and is very unpredictable. every computer in the place is plugged in through a battery backup/surge protector. when the power source fails, the battery pack takes over and powers the computer. but when the battery runs out of juice, and the power source cuts out…as the french say, “eh ben…c’est fini…tant pis…” so we got brand new battery packs…i have gone through three different ones in two days. it’s most frustrating to a scatterbrained guy like me, who - if distracted for even a split second from a thought i have - could…uh…what was i talking about? oh yeah, when my computer dies, i might never get back to what i was in the middle of…
those are my issues. like i said, the tech people are my friends. they are very able people, too. it’s just a matter of solving problems they’ve never seen before. uncharted waters, baby. it’s like an electronic adventure every time i come into the office.
well, it’s wednesday. if you only read this blog in the morning, then it’s probably thursday by the time you’ll get this on your screen… anyway, it’s wednesday and i’m getting ready for band practice this evening. i’ve got jesus music on the brain. so here’s a song that’s been getting stuck in my head all the time lately. it’s called breathe on me by todd fields, one of the worship leaders at north point church. this “wednesday worship” deal might be something that happens weekly…or maybe not. but for now, enjoy.
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